The present invention relates generally to equipment monitoring and administration and, more particularly, to a method and system of graphically displaying consolidated condition data for equipment of a host facility.
In a fast paced, ever changing, complex marketplace it is incumbent upon administration managers and personnel to actively, if not continually, monitor the operating condition of a company's or facility's assets. It is not only imperative that administrators maintain a close watch of asset operating condition, i.e., devices in need of repair, but administration officials must also be aware of asset location within a given facility. Without an aggressive monitoring and management program, the efficiency as well as the efficacy of the work of a particular business or enterprise is jeopardized. Further, failure to maintain assets or devices in a proper and timely fashion may result in undue harm to the users of the devices.
For example, hospital administrators must actively monitor the condition and location of medical devices throughout the hospital facility. The task of actively monitoring the devices has become, in recent years, much more difficult as hospital facilities have grown and/or consolidated. To properly monitor the devices, the hospital administrators must rely on feedback from various employees and service technicians to keep a watchful eye on device operating conditions. Further, known administration systems require the generation of several condition reports from various officials throughout the hospital facility to determine if a particular device is in need of immediate repair or servicing, or if device servicing is or should be scheduled. In a complex hospital facility having hundreds of medical devices, such as, magnetic resonance imaging systems, computed tomography systems, nuclear medical imaging systems, defibulators, pumps, x-ray devices, etc., it is paramount that the administration officials aggressively monitor device location and/or operational status. That is, hospital administrators should be reminded, in real-time, if a particular device is scheduled for servicing as well as be alerted if a particular device is presently located in an authorized area or suffered a particular breakdown in operation, i.e., unexpected power failure. With aggressive monitoring and management of the various devices, hospital officials are able to reasonably detect and eliminate improper device operation and unauthorized device positioning.
Further, known administration systems provide often voluminous status reports and scheduling reports to hospital officials detailing device alerts and/or reminders. Even with a nominally sized facility, accumulation, consolidation, and interpretation of these documents can be time-consuming, inefficient, and ultimately ineffective for adequately ensuring proper device operation.
It would therefore be desirable to design a system for providing real-time condition data in a single interface thereby enabling hospital officials to reasonably determine present device alerts and future reminders of device servicing.